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The stage musical has been slowly whittled over its history to where it now runs 2.5 hours, as opposed to its original 3. Two and a half hours is a perfectly normal running time for a big event movie these days, so I don't see any real reason not to keep the musical intact. The real challenge will be dealing with all those gorgeous but motionless ballads. Having an actor stand alone on stage and sing is thrilling in person, and potentially deadly on film, and this show has a lot of that. I imagine there will wind up being many cutaways to illustrative montage during songs like "I Dreamed A Dream" or "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables" to avoid the spectacle of hapless actors lip syncing while looking forlorn for entire songs at a time. I hope it all works out. I adore this show. But it could be a ponderous bore of a movie if not handled carefully.
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